i did a *fast* mockup of my shifting letters from project idea. just stuff from the flickr stream, crop and 90 degree rotate

ideally letters would have background masked and be uniform scale, but someone more adept in photoshop/gimp would need to do that.

once there's a stock of letters, the theory is each time you load the page, you could get a different iconographic spelling. of course letters that are more clearly the letter (like the t and m in the lower version) would be used.

the intent is that any project could be featured on the "logo" and any member could point and say yeah that's mine. a band of solid color above and below in a fixed color (and using another fixed color for the background mask)would provide clear branding. for tee shirts, we could choose some of the "best" images and change them every printing (even easier if we're using the theo-iron-on method)

anyone with time and better gimp skills than me want to take a go at getting a few of each letter up?

Metis - conceptually that's cool. I mean, very cool. But it will take a lot of photochopping to get the individual "letter" frames to the point where they're instantly readable 100% of the time. (I'd be willing to help with that, btw; I'm a dab hand with GIMP)

n.b. we don't necessarily have to settle on ONE design for a logo for a while, we've got a few things going (pie pie, spoon warning, soldering bleach, a few others on shirts) or necessarily only use one, but eventually we're going to need a brand icon as it were, the MAKE or CRAFTSMAN font, or golden arches, or NYC resistor something that can be used on letter head (yeah we'll need it for things like devolopment if we're gonna be a NFP), or store front signage. so keep up the amazing work everyone.

theo: we need more and better images. a few thigns leap out, like the wing nut for a k, or the inside of those clamps for an r, ot the cord for an m, but a's are tough.

things don't necessarily have to be completely cleaned or exactly the same size. say we want a 100 px banner, we do 10 px top and bottom of navy, and then format each letter to 80x80, so if one is more fat like the cord m, it could just be the full image,with the top and bottom the background color where as if it's cluttered like the wingnut k it coudl get tidied.